Do Samurai Use Shields
Pre heian period soldiers used shields but afterwards what with the development of the early samurai being horse archers and the general trend of japanese warfare being low in scale and ritualistic shields fell out of use.
Do samurai use shields. Depends on what u mean by shields. The samurai s armor adapted accordingly too to this threat. Although the preference is not to use hand held shields sometimes the samurai class did use shields whilst riding into battle. A samurai on horseback wearing ō yoroi 大鎧 in the beginning soldiers wore their shields so they had two hands to do other stuff like firing arrows using other two handed cqc weapons.
Most westerners believe that samurai were swordsmen only but they were multi role fighters and most likely found on a horse and more likely to st. 13 armour continued to be worn and used in japan until the end of the samurai era meiji period in the 1860s with the last use of samurai armour happening in 1877 during the satsuma rebellion. Since you can t use a bow without two hands personal hand held shields became unviable so they instead latched those onto their armor. They give birth astride of a grave the light gleams an instant then it s night once more.
If u mean a personal one person shield carried on the arm then no. Early japanese foot soldiers did at one time use hand shields dorothy perkins notes the use of wood and leather shields by foot soldiers as early as the mid 6th century. But they did have barricade like shields to protect towns and what not. You can see a picture of that here.
Large armor plates were attached to the shoulders to afford the guy extra protection in place of a personal shield. Early japanese foot soldiers did at one time use hand shields dorothy perkins notes the use of wood and leather shields by foot soldiers as early as the mid 6th century. Both samurai and ashigaru used shields tate to hide behind both on land and sea these were not hand held shields they were large wood panels. Both samurai and ashigaru used shields tate to hide behind both on land and sea these were not hand held shields they were large wood panels.
On why didn t the samurai use shields as often in addition to the inconvenience a hand held shield poses to a horse borne archer one of the clearest reason is because the unique samurai armour the kogusoku and ōsode. The samurai started as mounted archers.